Where has Spring Gone?

Breaking News!

This is Bill Everyman for Generic Internet News Channel. We have just learned that Spring is missing. Authorities have been looking for Spring since it didn't show up for work on March 20th as scheduled. Summer, close friends with Spring, has not heard from the season since the evening of the 19th.

"She texted me the night before," Summer said, her voice breaking. "She was really excited, you know. Winter has been a bastard this year and she was really looking forward to brightening things up with colors and warmer weather."

A spokesman for the Council of Seasons released this statement:

"We are cooperating with authorities in every way possible to bring Spring back safely. Any resources they need we are willing to provide. We want the new seasons to take over as scheduled. There has been speculation that Winter has had something to do with Spring's disappearance. We have talked to Winter extensively and are satisfied that he had nothing to do with the current situation. Winter has pledged to not take advantage and to cooperate with Federal authorities."

As to the final part of the statement, the FBI, along with Interpol, today conducted a search of Winter's home in Antarctica well as his summer cabin in Turtle Lake, North Dakota. No trace of Spring was found although they did confiscate personal photographs and videos stolen from Autumn when her iPhone was hacked last October.

Lead Interpol investigator Lieutenant Rand McTavish held a press conference directly after the search:

"We have several solid leads to follow. Interpol is coordinating with law enforcement from around the globe and we will find Spring. We have set up a hotline for any citizen to contact with information if they have anything viable to share. And no, seeing a robin is not a helpful lead. Do you understand Mrs. Lee Throckmeyer of Nashville Tennessee? Please stop calling. The number is 1-800-867-5309. Thank you."

This has been Bill Everyman. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, the season 2 finale of World's Greatest Police Chases on Unicycles.

One for the Coughers

A friend at work has a cold and the other day she coughed but it sounded sort of like a sneeze. I said "I'm not sure if that was a sneeze or a cough so I'll give you a 'bless you' just in case."

It got me to thinking, why do we say 'God bless you' when someone sneezes but if they cough we're more like "Will you please shut your pie hole, I'm trying to work." If the coughing continues throughout the day it accelerates to "I swear to God if you give me your cold I am going to lose my mind."

As soon as you sneeze, "Bless you."

Cough again, “Will you just go home!”

Sneeze. “God bless you.”

Cough cough cough. “I can’t take this. I’m working in the conference room.”

Achoo! “Gesundheit.”

Cough! “I don’t hate you, but I will kill you.”

I think we need a blessing for the coughers in our offices other than “shut up”. Something that says “I’m sorry you’re a germ-infested bowl of bacteria and I hope you feel better.”

How about we combine ‘bless you’ and ‘gesundheit’?

Blessundheitges!
Blegesssheitund!
Bless your undheit!
You gesund!

Ok, I’m still working on it, but I think it’s a good idea. The one exception? If you have a wet, phlegmy cough, you’re on your own. Get out and go home before you make us all puke. I mean it. No ‘GesBlessUnd’ for you.

My 24 Hours in Hell

It was a normal Sunday morning. I was sleeping in because I was up late the night before. I could feel sunlight sneaking in around the edges of the closed curtain dappling my face with warmth.

At precisely 9 a.m., however, a portal to hell was opened. A demon named Murray took the form of bacteria and entered my body where he proceeded to slice my stomach lining with a rusty flat head screw for the next 9 hours. He also turned everything in my intestines into a swamp with only one drainage point.

My small bathroom became my home; sitting on the toilet was my low-paying job. As a hobby I took up violently vomiting into a garbage can. Things I would recommend ahead of it include wrestling badgers, wearing underwear made of cactus skin and calling Comcast customer support.

I threw up so hard at one point red blotches appeared on my face. I looked like a rose garden had bloomed under my skin. The repeated convulsions left my ribs so sore I can't breathe heavy to make my weekly perverted phone calls to the nursing college annex.

At about the 4 hour mark I was begging for death from any god that would take my call. Apparently they were all on a golf outing together at Pebble beach because I couldn't get through even though I let it ring 2,324,231 times. Come into the 21st century and get an answering machine!

In the middle of hour 6 I hallucinated an 8 foot tall Barry Goldwater telling me "Relax, the duckies are OK." I responded with "Well now I know how the Dalai Lama felt the day his camel was repossessed." Music started so we danced until I threw up on his shoes.

When the six o'clock hour hit I finally felt better. My stomach was now rumbling from hunger. Murray had left my body and transmogrified back into Taylor Swift. I ate some crackers and later when I still felt good I ate some leftovers from dinner on Saturday. When I went to bed a few hours later all was well.

3:30 a.m. Monday morning, Murray makes his triumphant return. I am awoken by a garden rake being pulled slowly across my insides. I moved back into my bathroom apartment, resuming my pleas to all known deities and even a few I made up on the spot in hopes they were real. In the quiet moments, when Murray was taking a break to smoke a clove cigarette and write a pop song about a kitten, I realized my day in hell must be caused by something I ate and then like an idiot, ate again. This realization didn't make me feel any better and caused Murray to recall an anecdote about the time he and John Mayer got Chinese food in Denver at Yung Tung's House of Hunan which resulted in a song called "The Night We Shared the Hershey Squirts". Look for it on an upcoming John Mayer CD.

Thankfully this second bout ended after only 3 hours. Murray was bored and I was close to unconscious. I was able to pull myself together and even get to work on time. I can barely talk because my throat is raw, my ribs hurt every time I laugh or cough and I'm kind of afraid every time I eat something, but other than that I'm good.

Commercials are Making Us Dumber

There is a series of commercials I’ve seen a few times that are in my opinion trying to turn the movie Idiocracy into a documentary. They take a picture of a man and put him in front of a car and then in front of a truck. Then they ask supposed “real” people questions like which guy is sexier, what kind of pet you think the car guy and truck guy would have, how would the car and truck guy shake hands, etc.

I don’t know if the “real” people are actually dumb or have been scripted and edited to look stupid, but it’s THE SAME GUY. The pictured dude in front of the car and the truck is the same guy.

“Oh, the guy with the truck would have a three headed dog that belches fire and answers to the name Kraxenhammer. The car guy would have a grub worm or possibly a Chihuahua-pygmy Spaniel mix.”

IT’S THE SAME GUY!

“My, oh my, the truck man is hot, hot, hot. My pelvis is thrusting toward the picture so hard I think my hip just popped out of the socket. But the car man, he looks like a jobless drifter who would take my grandmother on a cruise, leave her on an island, then come home and move into her rent controlled townhouse.”

IT’S THE SAME GUY!

Is this really the best concept they could come up with for a commercial: Complete stupidity wrapped up in a moronic tortilla shell and covered in a sauce that kills your brain cells? I don’t even know what kind of truck they’re advertising. The asininity of the commercial makes me yell at the TV like I’m trying to answer a Wheel of Fortune puzzle before the contestant. Besides, if they aren’t advertising a book, music or pizza I’m not buying it anyway.

Give Music back to the Musicians

I wish record companies would let bands be who they are instead of trying to change them. There are many examples of this but I ran into one recently that reminded me that creating music and the music business are two separate entities that should probably never interact.

I am a fan of a fairly obscure heavy metal band from the 80s called Raven. I wore out my cassette tape of their album All For One. Recently I was at a flea market and found this vinyl copy of their The Pack is Back album. I wasn’t familiar with this one and the cover is . . . disturbing, but it was the 80s and metal bands were wearing . . . well let’s forget what they wore in the 80s. Being a fan of the band and still having a vinyl collection I bought this for a few dollars. I was excited to get home and put it on my turntable. Yes, I’m old. I still like hearing the needle drop onto the grooves of a record.

The first song played while I cleaned up a bit and I wasn’t thrilled with it. It wasn’t horrible but there was something wrong. It didn’t sound like Raven. Second song, not much better. It was a cover of Gimme Some Lovin’ by the Spencer Davis Group. By the time side one was over I had heard a horn section and way too many catchy melodies for this to be a heavy metal record.

After using Google to dig up some information I discovered that the record company wanted the band to make their sound more “commercial”. The result? A bad record followed by bad reviews and bad sales. Good job Atlantic Records.

Raven was not a pop band so why did you try to make them into one?  If you worked for Vertigo in the 70s would you have said to Black Sabbath, “You know lads, your records aren’t selling as well as they used to. We’d like you to do a cover of the Partridge Family’s I Think I Love You. You know, be a bit more commercial.” What if Columbia had said to Judas Priest, “Could you write a song about falling in love under a waterfall while holding a puppy? Three puppies would be even better.”

Let musicians be who they are. If they progress naturally into different genres they can make it work, but forcing them to play songs that aren’t their style never works. In this case, the pack was not back and Atlantic Records should refund my $4. Betty at customer relations said that’s not going to happen.

A National Day of Mourning

This is hard news to report. I’ve hesitated typing these words because there’s so much sadness in the world already and I didn’t want to add to it, but I see other news outlets have already broken the story. Yes, it’s true: Kelly Osbourne has quit Fashion Police.

She threatened to do it, but we didn’t believe her. The Republicans begged the president to go to DEF CON 3 and send in a seal team to talk her out of it. The Democrats tried to pass an emergency bill through congress outlawing her ability to quit the show, however, several key senators screwed it up by adding provisions for getting health insurance for the indigent and job creation legislation. Why can’t our elected officials see the big picture? There meddling killed the bill and now Kelly is gone.

How will this nation survive someone like Kelly, who has no discernible talent, leaving a TV show no self-respecting person would ever watch? This is what Americans thrive on: Narcissistic plasma balls wearing birthday-party-clown make-up getting paid the gross national income of Paraguay to do nothing of value to society. If we let people like this quit their meaningless jobs how will we fill 24 hours of programming on fringe networks like E!, Bravo or NBC?

This is indeed a sad day, but one we should have seen coming. Vacuum hoses like Kelly Osbourne can only suck the life out of us for so long before they fill up and blow away like a Mylar balloon, fading into the ionosphere.